1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital wireless communication systems. More particularly, the invention relates to communications transmission medium collision avoidance and preemption control.
2. Background of the Related Art
Extant digital wireless communication systems communicate on a single RF channel, as exemplified by transceivers including access points (APs) and clients (also called, “nodes”) compliant with the IEEE-802.11-1999 standard. Since only one device may make use of the transmission medium (in the instant example, a single RF communication channel) at any one time without destructive interference, a coordinating mechanism for reducing collisions (two entities transmitting contemporaneously) is codified in section 9.2.4 of the above-referenced standard. The fundamental access method of the IEEE 802.11 MAC is a Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) known as carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). Devices using this access method listen to the communication medium and detect a period of inactivity prior to transmitting.
The approach taught in the standard is to create an array of available transmission start time slots and, upon detecting a transition from a busy state to a clear channel state having the transmitting entities transmit or retransmit beginning in a randomly selected slot selected from the array. If collisions occur multiple times, the array size is doubled until a maximum is reached. The behavior of such a system is described in the standard as stable and fair (providing equal transmission medium access) for heavily loaded systems.
Much growth has occurred in in-home wireless local area networks (WLANs). Such localized systems are unlikely to ever require the relief offered by §9.2.4 of the above-referenced IEEE-802.11 specification. Indeed, the mechanism therein described will impose a modest penalty on such systems by creating an opportunity for inadvertent collision which must, then, be resolved in a manner that decreases throughput.
There are also situations, for example in Voice over IP (VoIP) applications, where a guaranteed bit stream transmission is required that should be afforded an unequal and higher priority than that afforded by the egalitarian technique defined by §9.2.4 of the above-referenced IEEE-802.11 specification.
There is thus a need in the art for a method and system for avoiding wasteful collision resolution in extant wireless data communication systems in a manner that retains the fundamental “fairness” of the intent of §9.2.4 of the above-referenced IEEE-802.11 specification. There is, further, a need to optionally set a priori preemptive transmission priorities, a feature not addressed by the above-referenced IEEE-802.11 specification.